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Empire of guns : the violent making of the industrial revolution / Priya Satia.

by Satia, Priya.

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Penguin Press, c2018.

338.47623 S253e

Galton, Samuel, 1753-1832.

Firearms industry and trade -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.

Industrial revolution -- Great Britain.

Great Britain -- Economic conditions -- 18th century.

xiv, 528 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Text in English.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 485-507) and index.

Part one: The industrial life of guns. The state and the gun industry, part I: 1688-1756 ; Who made guns? ; The state and the gun industry, part II: 1756-1815 ; The state, war, and industrial revolution -- Part two: The social life of guns. Interlude: A brief lesson from African history ; Guns and money ; Guns in arms, part I: Home ; Guns in arms, part II: Abroad -- Part three: The moral life of guns. Interlude: A brief account of the Society of Friends ; Galton's disownment ; The gun trade after 1815 ; Opposition to the gun trade after 1815.

A reframing of the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and the emergence of industrial capitalism presents them as inextricable from the gun trade and the story of disgraced Quaker gunmaker Samuel Galton.

We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. [This] rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

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